By paid social media traffic, I mean the practice of investing in paid ads and marketing for the purpose of delivering your content to relevant audience members—audience members who are actually interested in what you are selling.

Instead of paying some kid with a computer in a foreign country to “like” your photos, you are actually putting your content in front of someone whose interests genuinely coincide with what you are offering.

With that out of the way, let’s get down to business.

When should you pay for social media traffic?

Let me answer this question with four statements. If any of the following is true of your business, paid traffic may be your best approach.

1. When you are building an audience from the ground up

One of the first situations in which you should pay for social media traffic is when you are building an audience from scratch.

If you are just getting into the game of social media marketing, paid traffic is critical.

After the first year, you will likely have several thousand followers across your various channels.

In the second year, growth may continue at an even more rapid pace.

But eventually (and this typically happens around the 10,000 followers point), you will hit a wall.

You will still be adding to your followers, but, unless you are willing to start using the “performance enhancing drug” of paid traffic, it will take you years to hit your goals.

However, if you are willing to invest into paid traffic, you can beat the law of diminishing returns and skyrocket your social media following in a very short amount of time.

Luckily for us, there are no ethical, legal, or health concerns related to paid social media traffic like there are with steroids.

You have little to lose and much to gain.

4. When you want to increase your organic reach

I know that using paid traffic to increase your organic reach sounds like an oxymoronic statement.

And it is. But hear me out.

Just because someone follows you or “likes” your content does not mean your content is actually showing up in their newsfeed.

People simply follow too many different brands and individuals for all of them to show up in their feeds.

I, for example, follow dozens of other influencers and tech blogs across my various social channels.

But I rarely see any of the new content posted by the people I am following.

It’s not because I don’t like the content or because I have no need for what they are sharing.

It’s simply because of the volume of content published each and every day.

If you want to grow your organic reach and get your content in front of people who already like and follow you, you need to invest in paid traffic.

It will increase the frequency with which your content is seen by your followers, and your audience will be more likely to actually find out about a new product you are offering or a promotion you are running.

When should you not pay for social media traffic?

Now that I’ve covered some of the situations when you should pay for social media traffic, I want to touch on one of the biggest reasons why you should not pay for social media traffic.

It’s about quality.

If you are looking for super high quality traffic, paid ads may not be your best approach.

The current stage of your business will determine the type of traffic you want to generate.

For those of you just getting started, the single most important thing to focus on is simply generating more traffic and getting your content in front of new eyeballs.

For others, especially if you already have a strong social media presence, your focus should be on generating high quality traffic.

The quality of the audience you build with paid traffic will generally be lower than the quality of the audience you build with organic traffic.

This is due to a variety of factors.

First, we have to acknowledge the unfortunate reality of social media. There are hundreds of thousands of bots and fake accounts.

Whenever you use paid traffic, it’s much more likely that you will attract more of these automated accounts than you would if you were growing your reach 100% organically.

The second factor is that people who seek out and find your brand organically are typically much more likely to purchase than someone who simply “liked” your page because your ad popped up on their phone.

If someone has taken the time to find your social media pages without the persuasion of advertising or paid marketing, it means you are solving a problem they have.

These people will be much more likely to share your content, be engaged in your discussions, and invest in your products.